Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the member for Wild Rose. I know he is very passionate about this issue and worries tremendously, as all of us do who have children and grandchildren, realizing there is a lot of sickness out there, especially in the child pornography area. It is truly sick and truly evil. I appreciate his championing this cause. He has done it, as he has already said, dozens of times in the House. I encourage him to keep that up as long as necessary.
I would like to ask the member to comment on the Liberal government's attempt to deal with kind of a side bar issue, I guess one could call it, of the fall out from some of this child pornography. It brought in legislation a year or two ago to allow for the prosecution of people who go on overseas vacations and then abuse and use children in those exotic locations. People go on sex holidays so they can avoid Canadian laws and then use and abuse children. Of course this is all part of this whole worldwide child pornography connection. People are hugely connected and the sickness is not isolated to any one society.
Would the member comment on the number of prosecutions we have had under that legislation? I will give him the answer even though I know he knows it. The answer is zero, none, zip, no action, nothing. There have been no prosecutions, not a single filing of charges. That legislation is as useless as useless can be because the government is not serious about the issue of child pornography, about protecting children, not only in Canada but overseas, about realizing that it is an interwoven mess that goes from one continent and one culture to another.
However the same sick people are abusing everything from their own Internet fantasies to these vacations for sexual exploitation purposes. Yet nothing is done in a so-called modern society as ours. There is no strategy. We have feeble, useless legislation on the books and the government hides behind that by saying that it has done something through its legislation. Not only has there not been a single prosecution, there has not even been a single filing of charges under that legislation. It is the same thing for child pornography.
Does the member think it is an attitudinal problem or is it just that the government is afraid to put enough teeth in the legislation because it is afraid of the courts? I do not know what it is but I know what the net result is: no protection for kids, no national child pornography strategy and no one understanding that these are real kids in real peril right now.